Both American and United came out with new bonus mile offers today. Well… the United one wasn’t officially announced, but the registration page is up. More on that in a moment.
American Airlines is offering double AAdvantage miles (redeemable, not elite) on a batch of select Alaska Airlines flights. Registration is required and the travel window is from today, April 16, to June 30, 2012. The promotion code is ASD12 and double miles can be accrued in the following nonstop markets:
Burbank (BUR) – Portland (PDX)
Honolulu (HNL) – Oakland (OAK)
Honolulu (HNL) – San Jose (SJC)
Kansas City (MCI) – Seattle (SEA)
Los Angeles (LAX) – Mammoth Lakes (XXX)
Oakland (OAK) – Portland (PDX)
Ontario (ONT) – Portland (PDX)
Portland (PDX) – San Francisco (SFO)
With a hat tip to Wandering Aramean, United Airlines appears to be offering bonus MileagePlus miles (both redeemable and Premier Qualifying Miles) for trips between Boston and Tokyo Narita. It’s based on the fare purchased and offers either a 25% or 50% bonus as follows:
Ticketing and travel for this promotion is from April 1 to August 31, 2012. As Seth noted, the terms are a bit tricky. As United doesn’t have a nonstop in the market, the language of the offer reads, “Itineraries with connecting flights into or out of Boston and Narita are eligible for this promotion; however the bonus award miles only apply for segments between Boston and Narita.â€
The boldface is my emphasis and appears to mean that so long as you’re on some type of ticket between Boston and Narita – no matter the connection point – you’ll receive the bonus. Your mileage may vary, as always. The promo code on the United registration page is TB3M67.
Related post: New American and United bonus mile opportunities
I wonder if you piece together some zig-zag segments between Boston and Tokyo, you’d still get the 50% bonus PQMs… that would be an interesting mile run!
@Rob: Maybe he’ll chime in here, but a Twitter friend found an itinerary for about $1,500 that would net around 41,000 PQM with a 25% bonus.
I am the aforementioned Twitterer.
The best outbound routing was BOS-SFO-NRT, which was cheapest on all the days I checked (May/June it was ~$1000 r/t), it also happens to be just about the longest possible one stop routing. There were a lot of double stops, but those were all EWR/ORD/IAD, which didn’t get as many miles.
Coming back there was NRT-IAH-BOS on quite a few days, but the ORD/IAD/EWR routings were cheaper by a large margin most days.
If I were going to book it (and I certainly wish I could), I would stay safe with just one stop, especially when you can get a fair number of miles out of it.
Found $1510 fare on consecutive days starting May 28th: BOS-TYO, TYO-BOS, BOS-TYO, TYO-ORD (composed of TYO-BOS, BOS-ORD).
Just realized I already uploaded image:
http://kziel.com/images/BOSNRT.png
@Kris: Thank you!
OK. I’ve found the BOS-SFO-NRT-IAH-BOS routing for $1095 but with the bonus it’s still only 1.25*(16068) = 20085 miles. (5.45 cents/mile)
Not that that is to be sneezed at, but it’s a far cry from 41,000 PQM!